Start Paying the Price for What You Want

Everything that you want has a price.

In order to get what you want, you have to pay that price.

The sooner you start paying the price, the sooner your will have whatever it is that you want.

The Price of Your Sales Results

Let’s start with your sales results (this is The Sales Blog, after all).

If you want to win your dream client, you have to pay the price by nurturing the relationships that you need, creating value before claiming any. You earn your right to compete when you have proven yourself a value creator. If you don’t pay this price, you don’t deserve the opportunity to compete for their business. And it’s likely you won’t get that opportunity.

If you want to make your number, you have to pay the price by prospecting daily and building your pipeline. Prospecting, just like staying in shape, requires that you pay the price daily, whether you feel like it or not. If you pay this price, it’s easy to make your number. If you fail to pay the price to make your number, you’ll likely pay a higher price later.

If you want to win your dream client opportunity, you pay the price by spending time in their organization discovering the ground truth. You pay the price by building consensus around you and your solution, a price you pay by learning, by caring, and by having a presence. Failing to pay this price will result in you losing a deal at the boardroom table, having failed to do the work earlier.

If you want higher margins, you have to do the work of creating more value than anyone else would dream of creating. You have to do the work of proving that a higher price and greater value means a lower overall cost to your dream client. You pay the price for higher margins by creating that value and by proving it, neither of which are easy, both of which are essential.

You can have what you want, but you have to pay for it first.

Not An Academic Exercise

It’s easy to read things like this and agree with them in principle. But understanding that you need to pay the price and refusing to pay that price is the same as not understanding it.

Sales is an action-oriented endeavor. Your results aren’t improved by an academic exercise or discussion. Your results are improved when—and only when—you take the action necessary to pay the price to get the results that you want.

This principle is true regardless of the result you want, and regardless of the endeavor you are involved in. The sooner you start paying the price, the sooner you start producing the results that you really want.

Start paying the price.